What are you Watching?

Discuss anime, especially but not limited to 1950's~1990's series, and related sub-topics
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Char Aznable
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by Char Aznable »

DKop wrote:It did the one thing well that I was expecting it to do well on, and that was the visuals and recreating scenes from the Oshii film. I was pretty content with that. But for me, it's still far from the worst animated to live action adaptations that I remember seeing in the past.
The visuals were impressive, I admit. Along with the vehicle designs, especially Batou's car. And I'll give credit where it's due, the guy who played Batou did a great job. I genuinely felt the character had some depth, mostly thanks to his portrayal. Despite not liking the movie, it's definitely not the worst of the animated to live-action adaptations. There's a decent selection of other contenders up for that title...I remember the American Fist of the North Star film...unfortunately. I did really enjoy those Guyver films though, particularly the second one.
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usamimi
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Re: What are you Watching?

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This season there's a new anime series of "The Laughing Salesman", which is based on the manga if the same name by the creator of Doraemon. I'd never seen the old version or read the manga, but I figured I'd check it out cuz it sounded kinda interesting. It's a sort of Twilight Zone-ish show about a mysterious salesman who grants random people what their hearts desire, but it always backfires in a "be careful what you wish for" scenario.
The animation is simple, but nicely done. I was surprised it's a pretty fun show, and for being based on a Fujio A Fujiko series it's nowhere near as lighthearted as Doraemon xD
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

I remember coming across fansubs of the first Laughing Salesman anime a while back. Pretty interesting anthology series.
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DKop
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by DKop »

Char Aznable wrote:
DKop wrote:It did the one thing well that I was expecting it to do well on, and that was the visuals and recreating scenes from the Oshii film. I was pretty content with that. But for me, it's still far from the worst animated to live action adaptations that I remember seeing in the past.
The visuals were impressive, I admit. Along with the vehicle designs, especially Batou's car. And I'll give credit where it's due, the guy who played Batou did a great job. I genuinely felt the character had some depth, mostly thanks to his portrayal. Despite not liking the movie, it's definitely not the worst of the animated to live-action adaptations. There's a decent selection of other contenders up for that title...I remember the American Fist of the North Star film...unfortunately. I did really enjoy those Guyver films though, particularly the second one.
But how can you forget such classics as Dragonball Evolution, Kite, Blood: The Last Vampire, G-Savior, Aeon Flux and probably some more those were top dog adaptation!! (jk, those were all garbage :D )

I also dug Batou car design, its like they had a spare Deloren and were like "It needs to be more boxy looking, because its the future."
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

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The only anime-to-Hollywood adaptation that was any good was Speed Racer. And that still bombed at the box office relative to expectations. So far, anime has not proven to be bankable source material for Hollywood adaptations.
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DKop
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by DKop »

llj wrote:The only anime-to-Hollywood adaptation that was any good was Speed Racer. And that still bombed at the box office relative to expectations. So far, anime has not proven to be bankable source material for Hollywood adaptations.
I thoroughly enjoyed Speed Racer, I didn't understand why that bombed at the box office. I thought it was great from start to finish, and yea theres some issues with the pacing, but it was a fun movie.

Maybe we can hold out that Battle Angel Alita will do well, maybe...
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llj
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by llj »

Speed Racer was also innovative on a visual level too. It used CGI to try to achieve a certain anime-style artificiality in a totally unique and new way. In fact, I'd say Speed Racer was one of the most innovative uses of CGI I'd ever seen. They didn't just use it for standard SFX stuff, they used it to basically create a completely different world and experiment with a fresh style of cinematic language. They used speed lines and pans and cutaways in a way that is manga-like in feel but also very appropriate for live action as well. On a formal level, Speed Racer was actually quite bold and avant-garde for a Hollywood "blockbuster" film.
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Char Aznable
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by Char Aznable »

Couldn't get into that Speed Racer film, which was a shame, because I love the show. I thought the casting was great, but it was obvious they spent more time on the flashy visuals than story. Seen it once in the theater and never had any real interest to revisit it.

I forgot about that Blood: The Last Vampire movie. Yikes, that was a bad one. I recall there being a Crying Freeman movie as well, but I certainly don't remember it. Haven't seen Kite yet, though just from the trailer alone...I think I'll pass :lol: You'd assume that Kite would be an easy translation to live-action, it's hard to fathom how they could botch that up. Guyver 2: Dark Hero was the only anime-to-Hollywood film that nailed the feel of the source material, while managing to tell a decent story. Also makes me miss the pre-cgi days with the great animatronic/practical spfx.
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by usamimi »

llj wrote:The only anime-to-Hollywood adaptation that was any good was Speed Racer. And that still bombed at the box office relative to expectations. So far, anime has not proven to be bankable source material for Hollywood adaptations.
Ageed, Speed Racer was pretty great.
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DKop
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Re: What are you Watching?

Post by DKop »

Char Aznable wrote:I recall there being a Crying Freeman movie as well, but I certainly don't remember it. Haven't seen Kite yet, though just from the trailer alone...I think I'll pass :lol: You'd assume that Kite would be an easy translation to live-action, it's hard to fathom how they could botch that up. Guyver 2: Dark Hero was the only anime-to-Hollywood film that nailed the feel of the source material, while managing to tell a decent story. Also makes me miss the pre-cgi days with the great animatronic/practical spfx.
I highly enjoyed Crying Freeman. I heard Ducascas married Julie Condra (either after or during the filming) which I thought was pretty neat to hear. I thought the film adapted the manga 1 to 1 but changed up a few things here and there. Crying Freeman for me is my example of a great anime/manga to live action adaptation so far. I haven't seen Guyver 2, but I heard that was very faithful to the source material than the first one, which was trying to be a blantant Ninja Turtles ripoff.
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